Mexico

SOUND AND THE GOLDEN AGEOF MEXICAN CINEMA

The introduction of sound and the ensuing development of well-equipped
film production studios in the 1930s (bankrolled by private investment,
government loans, and US money) fostered the Golden Age of the Mexican
film industry. In 1929 and 1930, a total of approximately ten feature
films along with numerous shorts and newsreels accompanied by some form of
synchronized sound were released. The ultimate success of the industry was
made possible with the support of President Lázaro Cárdenas
(served 1934–1940). Cárdenas established a protectionist
policy that included tax exemptions for domestic film production, and his
administration created the Financiadora de Películas, a state
institution charged with finding private financing. He also instituted a
system of loans for the establishment of modern film studios.

Two major types of films emerged during this period: first, a
state-supported cinema that promoted the ambitions of Cárdenas and
projected a nationalistic aesthetic and ideology exemplified by films such
as
Redes
(
The Waves
, 1936) and
Vamanos con Pancho Villa!
(
Let's Go with Pancho Villa
, 1936), and second, films produced primarily for commercial reasons that
resembled Hollywood films in terms of narrative strategies, cinematic
aesthetics, and modes of production but drew on Mexican literature,
theatrical traditions, and contemporary Mexican themes. Measured in terms
of box-office receipts, it was the commercial cinema that proved to be the
most popular among Mexican audiences in the 1930s. In 1936 the wildly
successful film by Fernando de Fuentes (1894–1958),
Allá en el Rancho Grande
(
Out on the Big Ranch
), was filmed in Mexico City.
Allá en el Rancho Grande
introduced one of the most popular genres in Mexican film history, the
comedia ranchera
, a Mexican version of a cowboy musical that incorporated elements of
comedy, tragedy, popular music, and folkloric or nationalistic themes.
While the
comedia ranchera
became the most popular genre (in 1937 over half of the thirty-eight
films released were modeled on de Fuentes's film), other Mexican
genres also enjoyed relative success, including the historical epic, the
family melodrama, the urban melodrama, and the comedies of Tin Tan
(1915–1973) and Cantinflas (1911–1993).

Despite foreign control of exhibition, domestic film production managed to
increase from forty-one films in 1941 to seventy films in 1943. What is
more important, Mexico's share of its own domestic market grew from
6.2 percent in 1941 to 18.4 percent in 1945. This period was marked by the
emergence of an auteurist cinema practice represented by directors such as
Emilio Fernández (1903–1986), whose films included
Flor silvestre
(
Wild Flower
, 1943), a revolutionary melodrama, and
Salón México
(
The Mexican Ballroom
, 1949), an example of the
cabaretera
or dancehall film set in the poor urban barrios (neighborhoods) of Mexico
City. Another auteur was Luis Bun Cãuel (1900–1983), who
made over twenty films in Mexico between 1939 and 1960, including
Los Olvidados
(
The Young and the Damned
, 1950),
Abismos de passion
(
Wuthering Heights
, 1954), and
Susana
(
The Devil and the Flesh
, 1951).

In 1948 the most popular Mexican film of the Golden Age was released.
Nosotros los pobres
(
We the Poor
), directed by Ismael Rodríguez (1917–2004), starred Pedro
Infante (1917–1957) as Pepe el Toro, a widowed carpenter raising
his sister's daughter, Chachita, as his own, and caring for his
invalid mother in the poor, sprawling neighborhoods of Mexico City.
Incorporating elements of comedy and tragedy as well as popular music,
Rodriguez's film romanticizes the position of the urban underclass
at the same time that it reveals many of the adverse conditions they
encounter on a daily basis: prostitution, alcoholism and drug addiction,
violence, and disease.

Under Miguel Alemán (1946–1952), Mexico estab́dito
Cinematográfica Mexicano (CCM), whose purpose was to help finance
the nation's largest film producers. The CCM quickly moved into
production and distribution, buying up studios and movie theaters,
challenging the exhibition monopoly held by the American financier William
O. Jenkins (1878–1963). The government also instituted a number of
protectionist measures that nationalized the Banco Cinematográfico
and the CCM and exempted the industry from paying state taxes. In
addition, it supported the establishment of state distribution with the
institutionalization of Películas Nacionales, S.A., in 1947.

These actions were not enough, however, to prevent the subsequent decline
of Mexican cinema in the early 1950s, both in terms of quality and
quantity. It became very difficult after World War II for small countries
like Mexico to enforce import quotas on foreign films. Hollywood's
European markets reopened and the United States withdrew its wartime
support of the Mexican film industry. Because all sectors of the industry
were either owned or capitalized by foreign investors, this removal of
support had an immediate, although temporary, effect on Mexican cinema.
Film production dropped from seventy-two films in 1946 to fifty-seven in
1947 while, at the same time, producers turned to tried-and-true formula
pictures to draw audiences and ensure profits.

The Banco Cinematográfico became fully nationalized by the 1960s
and was responsible for generating most of the financing for feature film
production in Mexico. Financing was restricted to those producers who
could turn the highest profits, and thus low-budget
"quickies" became the films of choice in the industry.
Producers who were businessmen rather than filmmakers restricted their
product to genres such as soft porn,
rancheros
, and the masked wrestler films that appealed to a largely urban,
lower-class audience. In the end, the government's measures did
nothing to further the lished the Cre development of Mexican cinema.
Jenkins's monopoly ultimately bought out new distributors and the
import quotas were never carried out. Out of 4,346 films screened in
Mexico between 1950 and 1959, over half were North American and only 894
were Mexican. This situation continued through the 1960s.

ARTURO RIPSTEIN
b. Mexico City, Mexico, 13 December 1943

Arturo Ripstein, the son of film producer Alfredo Ripstein Jr., studied
filmmaking at Mexico's first film school, the Centro
Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos (CUEC), which opened
in 1963 at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City (UNAM). A
new generation of filmmakers, including Ripstein, was influenced by
Grupo Nuevo Cine, a group of young Mexican film critics who published a
journal by the same name in the 1960s, and the films of the French New
Wave. According to Ripstein, he decided to be a film director after
seeing Luis Buñuel's
Nazarín
(
Nazarin
, 1959). In 1962 Ripstein worked as an assistant to Buñuel on
El Ángel exterminador
(
The Exterminating Angel
), and fours years later he directed his first film,
Tiempo de morir
(
Time to Die
, 1966). One of the most prolific and influential directors of the 1970s
and 1980s, Ripstein has directed over twenty-five feature films as well
as documentaries and shorts. His films have been screened at many
international film festivals, including Cannes, and five of them have
been awarded "Best Film" at Mexico's version of the
Oscars
®
.

Ripstein's early films, such as
El Castillo de la pureza
(
Castle of Purity
, 1973),
El Lugar sin límites
(
The Place without Limits
, 1978), and
Cadena perpetua
(In for Life, 1979), introduced two themes that would dominate his
films over the next twenty years: the repressive nature of the nuclear
family and the destructive nature of Mexican codes of masculinity. His
films explore central social and cultural topics such as state and
familial authoritarianism and homophobia and feature characters doomed
by jealousy, guilt, and a nihilistic worldview.

In 1985, with
El Imperio de la fortuna
(
The Realm of Fortune
), Ripstein began a fruitful collaboration with the on
El A
screenwriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego. One of their most successful
collaborations,
Profundo carmesí
(
Deep Crimson
, 1996), which narrates the love story of an aging gigolo and a homely
nurse who embark on a killing spree, is based upon a well-known series
of murders that took place in the United States during the late 1940s.
Principio y fin
(
The Beginning and the End
, 1993), also written by Garciadiego, and adapted from the novel by the
Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, returns to Ripstein's earlier
themes as it traces the disintegration of a family following the death
of the father. His most recent films include
El Evangelio de las maravillas
(
Divine
, 1998), a Buñuelian-influenced work, and an adaptation of
Gabriel García Márquez's novella,
El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba
(
No One Writes to the Colonel
, 1999).

President Luís Echeverría Alvarez (served 1970–1976),
who campaigned on a platform of populism and reform, superficially
promoted the development of a strong film industry devoted to
"national cinema." He supported younger filmmakers who had
been left out of the equation during the previous decade and advocated an
opening up of Mexican cinema to new ideas. Echeverría oversaw the
creation of a national film archive, the Cineteca Nacionál, and the
establishment of three state-supported production companies,

Arturo Ripstein.

CONACINE, CONACITE I, and CONACITE II. He encouraged co-productions among
these studios, private investors, film workers, and foreign companies.
Between 1971 and 1976 the number of state-funded feature films increased
from five to thirty-five, while privately funded films dropped from
seventy-seven to fifteen as private investors refused to invest their
money in "socially conscious films" that had little
box-office attraction. In 1974 Echeverría oversaw the establishment
of the first national film production school, the Centro de Capacitacio
Cinematográńfica, which facilitated the emergence of a new
generation of film directors.

However, the next president, José López Portillo (served
1976–1982), reactivated a policy of privatization, thus reversing
Echeverría's successes. The Banco Cinematográfica was
formally dissolved, and its functions were transferred to a new state
agency. López Portillo appointed his sister, Margarita López
Portillo, to head the agency. She immediately reduced state financing of
films and closed down CONACITE I and II. Again, the Mexican film industry
was dominated by low-budget and lucrative comedies, soft porn, and
narcotráfico
(drug traffic) films.

Miguel de la Madrid assumed the presidency in 1982. The creation in 1983
of the Instituto Mexicano de la Cinematografía (IMCINE), whose role
it was to manage Mexico's film policy, was hailed as a significant
breakthrough for Mexican cinema. However, while IMCINE helped to finance
and promote a few independent films, it had a very small budget and could
only support one or two films per year. The Institute's first
director, filmmaker Alberto Isaac, reorganized the state-run production
and distribution companies and the state film school but proved to be a
poor manager, and the tenure of his successor, Enrique Soto Izquierdo, was
riddled with corruption. Soto Izquierdo failed to implement a workable
state film policy and, as a result, most of the films that saw any kind of
fiscal success were low-budget "quickies" funded by private
investors.

The election in 1988 of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, a Harvard-educated
economist, signaled a profound change in the direction of the Mexican
economy. Salinas was committed to a free-market ideology, and in 1990 he
began negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the
United States. Ignacio Durán Loera, the new director of IMCINE,
attempted to increase state financing of production through the creation
of the Fondo para el Fomento de la Calidad Cinematográfica (Fund
for the Promotion of Quality Film Production). While Durán was able
to solicit co-production financing from Spain and other foreign investors,
it was not enough to keep the industry afloat as state-owned studios and
movie houses shut down at the same time that private investors withdrew
from the industry. Film production dropped from one hundred films in 1989
to thirty-four in 1991.

However, the international success of IMCINE-financed films such as
Como agua para chocolate
(
Like Water for Chocolate
, 1992),
Amores perros
(
Love's a Bitch
, 2000), and
Y tu mamá también
(
And Your Mother, Too
, 2001) gave Mexican filmmakers recognition and thus access to
international financing. (
Amores perros
won numerous awards and grossed $10.2 million in Mexico and $4.7 million
in the United States alone.) Perhaps in response to these successes, the
Mexican government in 2003 set up a permanent fund with a preliminary
budget of $7 million that aims to attract co-production money to support
film production. However, today, most of the films and videos in Mexico
are still imported from Hollywood. In addition, the Mexican film industry
is not just competing with American films or French films, but with
multinational co-productions that can generate products with a guaranteed
international appeal. It seems that the future of a viable Mexican film
industry is dependent on its ability to produce films that appeal to a
global audience.